Is Israel's Very Existence Under Threat?
by DEBKAfile
14 September 2002
US President George W. Bush and his top military and intelligence advisers are clearly convinced by the evidence in their hands that America faces an existential peril.
American intelligence has captured a most somber picture: Russian black marketeers
handing over nuclear suitcase.
One piece of evidence is .... the Palermo Senator container vessel,
detained and searched at sea for four days after radiation traces were detected
in its hold on September 9. The fact that the search came up empty does not
obviate the danger. It is as acute as ever. It ties in with the solid intelligence
the FBI is holding that 40 al Qaeda men are heading for the United States by
ship. No one knows what ship, what arms they bear conventional, chemical,
biological or nuclear or where they are programmed to strike.
US federal agencies have been haunted by the seemingly phantom group ever since
they were tipped-off last May that Osama bin Ladens men was aiming for
Santa Catalina, an island 35 km south of Los Angeles. The group may have already
stolen into the country or changed direction for another port - London, Haifa
or Ashdod. The FBI is giving out little on this affair, fearing to be accused
of once again failing to hunt down terrorists on their way to wreak disaster.
However since May, whenever a foreign freighter chugs into any American port,
the Coast Guard makes sure to bring out Geiger counters before it is cleared
for entry.
DEBKAfile sWashington sources reveal that the fuss and ado around Palermo
Senator was the real reason for vice president Richard Cheney being consigned
to a secure place on the night of Monday, September 9.
The fear of unconventional weapons of terror stealing into America is only one
element of the sense of encompassing peril in store. A nightmarish standoff
of the type familiar to movie thriller fans has certainly entered the minds
of Washingtons decision-makers. It goes something like this: One morning,
a spokesman of the ruling Iraqi Baath Revolutionary Council issues a statement:
Iraqi secret agents are in place at two or three key centers in America - or
strategic locations in America, Britain and Israel - armed with suitcases containing
nuclear devices or deadly viruses, smallpox, anthrax etc. Then comes the ultimatum:
Bush is given 12 or 24 hours to go public before the UN General Assembly and
revoke his war plans for Iraq, or else an irreversible order goes out to the
agents to release the suitcases deadly contents. An American pre-emptive
blitz of Iraq cities would have the same consequence.
That is only a scenario. However, hard intelligence data reaching Washington
raises the distinct possibility of Iraqi agents, or Iraq-trained Palestinian
terrorists, being concealed somewhere on the West Bank or hiding in an Israeli
Arab community, armed with exactly such suitcases. Their penetration and concealment
will have been facilitated by Yasser Arafat and his Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
This danger, raised more than once in DEBKAfile, accounts for the as yet unpublished
Israeli government decision to begin inoculating the entire Israeli population
against smallpox after the Succoth festival, that is from September 30.
It also explains the chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalons statement last
week that he discerns in the Palestinian terror campaign elements hazardous
to Israels survival. This assertion brought down on the generals
head a full-blown assault by Israeli left-wing political groups.The chorus of
protest came from factions that initiated and carried through the 1993 Oslo
Peace Accords with Yasser Arafat, supported by a gallery of media pundits.
The contrast is stark.
The Bush administration fully acknowledges that America is in grave existential
peril, even without facing a potential Iraqi military invasion of New York,
while Israels chief of staff is slammed for the crime of articulating
the same warning.
The attacks on him were given academic substance by a political scientist at
Beersheba University called Henrietta Dehan, who was invited to appear on a
prime time TV newscast Friday night. She proceeded to explain that Israel dare
not be drawn into the American move against Iraq for fear of forcing the Arab
world to gang up on it and embark on a fresh arms race. The Arabs, she said,
have the financial and technological edge in this race. Israel will be safe,
this academic insisted, if it stays clear of the American offensive against
Iraq.
She found nothing threatening in the Palestinian terror that has blighted Israel
for two years, nor the Hizballah whose avowed objective is to destroy Israel.
Above all, she saw no danger in the alliance between Saddam Hussein and Yasser
Arafat and their weapons of mass destruction that threaten Israel as much as
America. This political scientist had even forgotten that in 1991, Israel was
as quiet as a mouse, yet was attacked by Saddams missiles.
Mme Dehans thesis, broadcast on the eve of a conflict that placed Israels
survival in danger 29 years ago, is a perfect example of the amnesia and denial
afflicting some of the most vocal Israeli politicians, writers and academics.
This shrinking group of chronic deniers persists in pointing its finger in the
wrong direction to avoiding recognizing that, whatever Israel may or may not
do in the war against Saddam Hussein, it faces a tangible threat to its existence
which comes from the bitter fruit planted by the accord signed at Oslo nine
years ago. Any political scientist worth his or her salt would address the connection
and the reality instead of chasing false hares.